Tax in blood

In Ottoman Empire Christians were but slaves at nonexistent mercy of their Muslim lords. Many, many Western books write about different horrors the Christians endured. One form of oppression was that Muslims gave themselves "right of the first night". In practice it meant that Turkish (or local Muslim Slav) lord would spend the first night with the new Christian bride. The groom had to take shoes off and silently circle the house while the Turk makes love to his wife.

Still, by far the worst horror the Christians had to endure was the Turkish Janissary system. Western schollars frequently downplay the importance of this "Tax in Blood" as Christian subjects nicknamed it:

Conversion to Islam - through kidnapping

While any subject boy might aspire to the highest rank in the Turkish Empire, he had to convert to Islam to do so; when the security of the Ottoman state demanded, there were forced conversions. Every four years the most vigorous boys were taken from the towns and villages, willingly or not, to be trained as Janissaries (a word from the Turkish yeni cheri, or new troops).

From: "Origin of the Myth of a Tolerant Pluralistic Islamic Society" Bat Ye'Or, Chicago, August 31, 1995

The Devshirme system is well known. Begun by the Sultan Orkhan (1326-1359), it existed for about 300 years. It consisted of a regular levy of Christian children from the Christian population of the Balkans. These youngsters, aged from fourteen to twenty, were Islamised and enslaved for their army. The periodic levies, which took place in contingents of a thousand, subsequently became annual. To discourage runaways, children were transferred to remote provinces and entrusted to Muslim soldiers who treated them harshly as slaves. Another parallel recruitment system operated. It provided for the levy of Christian children aged six to ten (Ichoghlani), reserved for the sultans' palace. Entrusted to eunuchs, they underwent a tyrannical training for fourteen years.

The first presentation above sounds almost idyllic: A boy dreams of obtaining "high rank in the Empire" or some boys "were taken" from their parents in order to achieve glorious carrier in Turkish Army.

What it actually meant was that the hated Turks would kidnap your child and - even worse - return it, now as a Muslim and your worse enemy!

How can anyone put it in words? Dr. Ivo Andrich, who was born in Bosnia was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1961 for his novels about Bosnian Christian suffering. Encyclopedia Britannica (Micropedia, Edition 1986, Vol 1, Page 393, entry: Andric, Ivo) said (quote):

Andric's work reveals his deterministic philosophy and his sense of compassion and is written objectively and soberly, in language of great beauty and purity. The Nobel Prize committee commented particularly on the "ephic force" with which he handled his material, especially in "The Bridge on the Drina".

Let the master of literature talk. Here is an excerpt from the above mentioned Nobel Prize book "Bridge on the Drina," which describes how this "tax in blood" felt, as it is told and retold chilling blood of generations of surviving Christians of Bosnia.

On that November day a long convoy of laden horses arrived on the left bank of the river and halted there to spend the night. The Aga of the janissaries, with armed escort, was returning to Stambul after collecting from the villages of eastern Bosnia the appointed number of Christian children for the blood tribute.

…the necessary number of healthy, bright and good looking lads between ten and fifteen years old had been found without difficulty, even though many parents had hidden their children in the forests, taught them how to appear half witted, clothed them in rags and let them get filthy, to avoid the Aga's choice. Some even went so far as to maim their own children, cutting off one of their fingers with an axe.

…a little way behind the last horses in that strange convoy straggled, dishevelled and exhausted, many parents and relatives of those children who were being carried away forever to a foreign world where they would be circumcised, become Turkish and, forgetting their faith, their country and their origin, would pass their lives in the service of the Empire. They were for the most part women, mothers, grandmothers and sisters of the stolen children.

[The women would get driven away but…] ….gather again a little later behind the convoy and strive with tear-filled eyes to see once again over the panniers the heads of the children who were being taken from them. The mothers were especially persistent and hard to restrain. Some would rush forward not looking where they were going, with bare breasts and dishevelled hair, forgetting everything about them, wailing and lamenting as if at a burial, while others almost out of their minds moaned as if their wombs were being torn by birthpangs and blinded with tears ran right onto the horsemen's whips and replied to every blow with the fruitless question: "Where are you taking him? Why are you taking him from me?" Some tried to speak clearly to their children and give them some last part of themselves, as much as might be said in a couple of words, some recommendation or advice for the way... "Rade, my son, don't forget your mother...' "Ilija, Ilija, Ilija!" screamed another woman, searching desperately with her glances for the dear well-known head and repeating this incessantly as if she wished to carve into the child's memory that name which would in a day or two be taken from him forever.

Mother's cries must still be echoing Bosnian mountains.

It should not pass without mention that once Westerners conquered Bosnia, recently, one of the first thing they did in the course of "engineering democracy" (and while trying to impose Muslim rule on Bosnian Serbs) was to ban use of Dr. Andrich's works from school books for the Serbian children. It is as if one was to ban Shakespeare in England!

Andrich's books were translated in all languages of the West. His, above cited book "The Bridge on the Drina" can be found in any decent size library in the West. It tells volumes about total collapse of Western culture and morality that the same Western nations which praized Bosnian author in 1961 - banned his works few decades later.

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